The Things We Wish Were True (23 page)

JENCEY

The police moved like bees around a hive, encircling James Doyle’s house. Lance was nearby talking to Zell, who was also standing on her front lawn to watch the scene. She looked around but didn’t see Bryte anywhere. One by one the media arrived, leaping from their cars to be the first on the scene, two of them actually sprinting across the yard, racing each other. It would’ve been comical if there was a different reason for their presence.

Though it was now fully dark, the place was lit up like midday. Jencey had watched several policemen lead a confused and frightened Jesse from the home, looking for all the world like he was the one being arrested, his eyes darting around, taking it all in, or trying to. Alone and terrified, she’d seen him run out of the house after Cailey had smashed the glass, then back inside. She’d felt sorry for him, but kept her distance. She was just another stranger to him, even if once upon a time she’d ridden the school bus with him, never making eye contact, avoiding the weird guy from her neighborhood. Though it was too late, she wished she’d been the kind of girl who would’ve been nice to Jesse. Maybe if she had been she could’ve crossed the yard, walked beside him, helped him somehow understand what was happening. She wondered where he’d spend the night. She shook her head. First his mother’s loss, now this.

Hannah had also been removed from the scene, taken away in an ambulance moments after the authorities arrived. This time Cailey had been allowed in the ambulance, mostly because Hannah Sumner had flipped out about getting in until they said she could have Cailey with her. Jencey watched as Cailey bravely climbed into the ambulance and perched on the side of the stretcher, taking the girl’s hand with a resolute look on her face, looking far older than her years. Hannah was slipping into shock, her mind protecting her from reality. Jencey thought of the times she’d seen that face on TV this summer, the times she’d changed the channel so her girls didn’t see it, believing that if you didn’t look directly at it you could pretend it wasn’t there. She didn’t like to think of the many times she’d spent the night at Lance’s, steps away from a child’s endless nightmare. She tried not to think of Hannah’s parents seeing her again, imagining their simultaneous joy and terror. Parents were supposed to be the ones to make the nightmares go away.

So far there’d been no sign of James. Cops were coming and going in their attempt to locate and arrest him. She supposed she was waiting for news of his arrest, hungry for some sense of justice. She hoped some cop got in a few good kidney punches once the cuffs were on. Ordinarily she was opposed to violence, but tonight her blood boiled. She thought of being a frightened young girl herself, never held prisoner except in her own mind. She looked behind her at the house where the person who’d terrified her—who’d made her flee—had lived. It was over now. She never had to worry about someone threatening her, never had to look over her shoulder again.

She glanced over and caught Lance watching her. Slowly, meekly, she raised her hand in greeting, relieved when he said something to Zell, and ambled over in response. She longed to reach out to him, to feel his strong arms make her feel safe like that night after they learned about Ty. Not knowing where Debra was or why Debra wasn’t there, she kept silent, kept her distance. For a few minutes, he stood wordlessly beside her as they both took in the scene, disbelief floating in the air between them. Other disbelieving neighbors began trickling out of their houses as word spread, needing to see this with their own eyes. They formed clusters in Lance’s and Zell’s yards, everyone grappling for a clear view, angling for the latest news.

She needed to call her mom, let her know she was OK. They’d be home from the movies by now, would no doubt hear and be concerned. She thought of her mother’s face as she’d said goodbye to her before she’d left for that college so far from home. She could see now that her mother had been terrified but worked to keep her from seeing it. When she got home, she would thank them for making sure she was safe by letting her go. If the tables were turned, she wasn’t sure she could’ve done the same.

Tears began to fall, but she made no motion to wipe them away lest she call attention to herself. This night shouldn’t be about sadness. Jencey was free and so was that little girl. Lance stepped closer. He put his arm around her and drew her into him, closing the distance between them. And then, ever so gently, he reached up and wiped her tears away. She hadn’t drawn attention to her tears, but he’d seen them anyway. She began to cry harder, and he pulled her in, surrounding her with love.

BRYTE

Thankfully, Myrtle Honeycutt was still up watching a Braves game when Bryte brought Rigby back. “Did you hear all that commotion out there?” the old woman asked as she opened the door, her eyes wide and darting around. “You got any idea what’s going on?”

Bryte patted Myrtle’s shoulder, assuring her that everything was fine. She helped her settle in for the night and watched to make sure she locked the door behind her. Still keyed up from the events of the night, she came home to a darkened house. She worried that Everett had done exactly what she’d feared he would do since the day they got together. But would he take their son? The word caught in her throat:
their.
He would not take Christopher because he was not his son. And the knowledge of that might’ve been the final straw. She resumed her internal lecture from before: she’d done this to herself, and she deserved everything that came to her.

Still, she called out into the darkness, “Everett?” her voice a loud, urgent whisper. She wanted to tell him what had happened that night, all that she’d witnessed at Zell’s house. She thought of the terrified little girls in Zell’s kitchen, the flashing lights of the police cars throwing red-and-blue patterns against the neighboring houses, the onslaught of reporters. She’d snuck away while everyone was distracted. Hannah’s discovery was a big story, but she had an unfolding drama of her own to sort out.

Everett didn’t answer her, so she moved quickly toward Christopher’s room, not bothering to turn on the lights as she went. She knew this house in her sleep, could feel her way through the darkness without bumping into furniture or walls. The knot in her throat grew as she thought about leaving it. There was no way she could afford to keep it on her own. All she’d ever wanted was to live in this neighborhood with her own family one day. Her dreams had been relatively small, yet still too big for her to attain.

Christopher’s door was open, the night-light they kept lit for him spilling the tiniest bit of light into the hall. She paused in the doorway when she saw Everett already there, standing beside his toddler bed, Gulliver looking down at the Lilliputian. She stood stone-still, taking in the scene as she waited for the knot in her throat to dissolve. After a few moments, she realized she was holding her breath, and she exhaled. When she did, Everett turned around and saw her. In the darkness, she could barely make out his face, yet she knew instinctively he’d been crying. Just as instinctively, she moved toward him, wanting to hold him, to dry his tears, to make everything OK for him just like she’d always been compelled to do.

But of course that instinct had gotten them where they were today. She kept her arms at her sides and willed herself not to reach for him.

“I thought you were gone,” she whispered.

He shook his head, and there was silence for a few more seconds. “I thought about it,” he finally said. “I even came in here to . . . say goodbye, to tell him I was sorry.”

He went quiet, and she fought the urge to tell him to keep talking. The words were on her lips: “You have nothing to be sorry for.” But she held them in, biting on her bottom lip to refrain from speaking.

“But I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t tell him goodbye.” He turned to look at her again, and she could hear the tears in the thickness of his voice. “He’s so beautiful.”

She nodded as her own eyes filled with tears. “Yes,” she said. Below them, Christopher threw his arms over his head, his chin pointed toward the headboard, his little elephant tucked close to him, moonlight highlighting the features she’d searched a thousand times for proof or denial of his parentage. Some days she could see Trent in him as clear as day. Other days she saw Everett, because she wanted to. When he was born, Everett’s mother had marched into the hospital room, clasped her hands to her chest, and exclaimed, “He looks just like his daddy!” Bryte had foolishly hoped that meant she was home free. But she had never truly been home free again.

Everett motioned for her to follow him out into the hall, and with one last glance at Christopher, she did. What she’d done was stupid, but her son’s existence was the opposite of regrettable. She would spend the rest of her life caught in that paradox. She pulled Christopher’s door nearly closed, leaving just a crack between the frame and the door itself, the way she herself had slept as a child.

She followed Everett across the hall and into their bedroom, pausing at the threshold again. He slumped into the overstuffed chair she’d long ago stuck in the corner of the room when her mom was getting rid of it. It had become a repository for discarded items of clothing draped across the back—his and hers—that neither of them ever bothered to look through unless they needed something in particular. She was pretty sure her coat and his thick flannel shirt were still there from winter, waiting to be discovered.

She couldn’t look at him sitting there, his head in his hands. Her eyes moved over to their bed just for somewhere else to look. She wished it was like any other night and she could just crawl into it, could feel Everett’s steady presence beside her, have him tease her with his ongoing accusation that she snored. The little things were what she’d miss. She heard him inhale and steeled herself for whatever he was going to say.

“Do you have feelings for him? Do you want him in Christopher’s life? Is that why you went to see him?”

The words stunned her. “No,” she said, the objection ringing in the silent room. “Nothing like that. I—” She was going to say that she truly went there to talk to him about a job. But as she met his eyes, she knew he saw through that, probably faster than she had. Her voice was softer as she went on to explain. “You wanted another baby so much. And I knew it wasn’t going to happen. And then I found his business card. I’d kept it because . . .” She made herself look at his eyes. “Well, I kept it just in case there was ever something . . . genetic. That came up.”

They blinked at each other for a moment, absorbing the weight of all she’d kept hidden from him.

“And when I saw it again, it just made me think about . . . seeing him again. You kept talking about another baby, and I was feeling pressured to finally tell you the truth, and I guess I wanted to try to remember what could’ve possibly made me think it was the answer.”

There was more silence, more broken gazes. She spoke again to fill the silence, to somehow utter the words that would make him understand.

“I wanted to tell you since the moment it happened. I wanted to look you in the eye and say, ‘We are never having children of our own so let’s figure out how to deal with it.’” As she spoke, she moved toward him, her steps deliberate and certain. She would wrap her arms around him, and if he pulled away, he would be the one to pull away. But she wasn’t going to pull away anymore. She would love him until the last second she had to love him. And if she lost him anyway, well, at least she’d made the most of the time she had with him.

She stopped when she got close to him, her arms hanging limply at her sides. “But then I would see you with him and the two of you would be laughing and talking about what you were going to work on in the yard or what his favorite kind of dinosaur is and I would think, ‘How can I possibly wreck this?’ Why would anyone want to wreck this?” A tear escaped the corner of her eye and traveled the length of her cheek. She didn’t bother to wipe it away. It fell off the edge of her face and disappeared into the carpet.

“I love him,” Everett said, his choked voice barely more than a whisper.

“Of course you do.”

“He’s my son.”

She felt some of the tension she’d been holding in her body whoosh out with those three words. “Yes,” she said.

“It’ll take a long time to let it sink in. That he’s not. Technically.”

She bristled but kept quiet.

“And he doesn’t know? Anything?”

This was a different he, but Bryte knew who Everett meant. She shook her head. “Nothing.”

Everett reached up and took her hands, lacing his fingers in hers. She looked at him, surprise evident on her face. But on his face she saw a look she couldn’t ever remember seeing. It was a hard look, a determined look, his jaw like steel, pulsing. “Did he make a play for you when you were with him today?”

Her heart picked up speed. She swallowed as she determined how to answer. Truth. She had promised herself she would tell the truth from now on. “S-sort of. I think . . . he thought perhaps what happened before could h-happen again. He wanted me to stay for dinner.”

“And it would’ve happened again, if it had happened.” He pointed at her stomach. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

She nodded. Of course she’d thought of the timing, how easy it would be—on one level—to let it happen again.

He let go of her hands, and for one desperate moment, she feared she’d given him the wrong answer. But then she saw him glance over at the clock, and she knew. They looked at each other, and for a few moments neither of them spoke as, without words, each took in what was happening.

“I can’t give you a child,” he said.

“I know.”

“Ever.” He leaned over as he said it, as if he’d been punched. “It’s hard to say that out loud.”

She watched as he righted himself to a standing position, trying not to get ahead of what he was saying.

“After you left I thought about it and . . . we can’t have any more kids.” He exhaled loudly. “We’ll have to either adopt or get a donor, and if we do that, then that child will be different from Christopher. It’ll be totally obvious. To him. To everyone.”

“Yes,” she said. She was doing her best to keep her knees from giving out. Her head thrummed, and Everett’s face swam a little before her eyes.

He took a deep breath, held it, and exhaled. “I don’t want different. I don’t want anyone to ever know. Most of all, him. I’d do anything to protect him from ever finding out that I’m not his real father. Because I am.”

Her eyes filled with tears, and she closed them briefly, then opened them to find Everett looking back at her. She’d gone to the hotel to see if she could perpetuate the illusion she’d created. But she’d lost her nerve because it would only be another lie piled on top of the festering heap she’d created. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words would come.

“If I could pick out any little boy to be my own, I’d pick him.” He reached for her hands again and squeezed them hard. “I want you to know that. I need you to know that.”

She willed herself not to cry even as more tears leaked from her eyes. Later she would fall apart. Now something was happening that could not occur if she gave in to her emotions. She remembered the robotic feeling from the night she’d made Christopher, how she’d so easily exchanged her warm flesh for cold metal, her skin barely registering the contact as he moved over and inside her. In her head she heard that damn Heart song playing on an endless loop. What Everett couldn’t give her was the one little thing he could.

Everett swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing inside his throat, and she thought for the millionth time what a tragedy it was that this man—this handsome, charming, kind man—could never reproduce himself. “How drunk do you think he is by now?” he asked. His breathing pattern had changed. He sounded like he did after he’d been lifting weights.

“He was well on his way when I left at five. He might even be passed out by now. Or with someone else. Or . . .”

“Shhh,” he said. He rested his finger on her lips for the briefest of seconds, and then reached into the pocket of her shorts to retrieve her cell phone. He held it out to her. “Yes?” He raised his eyebrows, shaking the phone the slightest bit.

She took the phone from his hand, felt his gaze rest on her, and in it his assumption that she would do this thing. But would it be any easier with his complicity? She saw them in her mind, her two beautiful children, a perfect matched set. It was so tempting to perpetuate what she’d created, and guarded, for so long. It was right there if she wanted it, and all it would take is one more meaningless night. But of course, it wasn’t meaningless. That one night held more meaning than nearly any other before or since. It divided and defined, haunted and hindered. But no more.

She exhaled, the whoosh of air loud in the silent room. She cupped his chin in her hands and gave him the barest hint of a smile. “No,” she said, and handed him back the phone.